James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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or by email:gurneyjourney (at) gmail.comSorry, I can't give personal art advice or portfolio reviews. If you can, it's best to ask art questions in the blog comments.

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It seems the majority of Americans can't recognize the original Jesus for the fictional metaphor that he is.

(Sun = Son)

We've forgotten what it would be like to not know what the sun, moon and stars are or why they move through the sky with mathematically precise timing. Without the need for a fictional explanation we forget what the metaphor used to mean.Of course, Jesus is also a metaphor for the self and this is what people cling to while society slowly forgets the story's role in explaining the natural world.

C.S. Lewis (by most accounts a halfway intelligent guy) had some very insightful things to say about who Jesus is. Unfortunately, they would probably not be welcomed in today's climate of post-modern gibberish that passes for "intelligent conversation"

@KevinActually, if you look at the etymology of the two words sun and son, you can see similarities all the way back to Proto-Indo-European dating to approximately 2,500 BCE. "Sun" was "Suwen" and "Son" was "Sunu," not exactly the same, but both stemming from the root "Su-" "to give birth." The second part of "Suwen," "-wen" means "love" So the root of the the word "sun" is "to give birth to love." Sound religious?

Christians today seem invested, almost to the point of absurdity, in the idea of a historical Jesus. They're sure, because they've been told so by religious authorities, that a real individual a long time ago is also THE divine being.There isn't any archaeological or literary evidence for it. Argue about scattered quotes in Tacitus or Josephus if you like, but there just isn't.The Christian stories are all metaphors for astronomical phenomena, the same as in other religious traditions. (Not that there is no truth or value in Christianity; there is plenty of that, of course.)